Newsgroups: php.internals
Path: news.php.net
Xref: news.php.net php.internals:79766
Mailing-List: contact internals-help@lists.php.net; run by ezmlm
Received-SPF: pass (pb1.pair.com: domain gmail.com designates 209.85.214.177 as permitted sender)
Message-ID: <5490E6F2.4050109@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 18:14:10 -0800
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:31.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/31.3.0
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Christoph Becker <cmbecker69@gmx.de>, 
 "guilhermeblanco@gmail.com" <guilhermeblanco@gmail.com>,
 Rowan Collins <rowan.collins@gmail.com>
CC: PHP internals <internals@lists.php.net>
References: <548FEE87.7020602@gmail.com> <549009EE.7040808@fischer.name> <D5013CDA-61F7-467F-B896-F627D8DBA156@ajf.me> <54907683.2070509@gmail.com> <8AB6896C-D5DB-4471-BBD5-60784B2FC1BE@gmail.com> <54907EDE.6020500@gmail.com> <4E4F7392-154C-4282-8D5D-553194D09DCE@gmail.com> <CAFp73XtbFXAUpNE6fKFMLO8uq80hD-5perXfFs8dKY=MG0SqZA@mail.gmail.com> <5490DC22.2080605@gmx.de> <5490DD19.2080502@gmail.com> <5490E226.3070202@gmx.de>
In-Reply-To: <5490E226.3070202@gmx.de>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] [RFC][VOTE] Objects as Keys
From: smalyshev@gmail.com (Stanislav Malyshev)

Hi!

> Yes, but it is already possible to call an object's method in array key
> context, so in combination with an appropriate interface the same can be
> accomplished.

No, it's not possible. It is possible to call object method in an
expression, and then use the result of the expression as an array key.
But to do that you'd have to check that you're dealing with the object
and the call the special method.
Looks like you don't understand why PHP has magic methods - since your
argument applies to every one of them. Why have __toString if you can
just call object method? Why have __call if you could just check if
method exists and call a special method if it doesn't? Why have __isset
if you could just call special method on an object and pass it the
property name? Of course, it's "just sugar". All programming languages
are "just sugar" by that definition.

> I didn't mean to argue against the RFC, but merely wanted to point out
> that one could have object hashes without the proposed magic method
> (albeit in a more contrived way).

You could have *everything* in a more contrived way. PHP 2 was Turing
complete, I am sure. Were we just wasting time these last 15 or so years
because everything was done in PHP since then was already possible,
albeit "in a more contrived way"? Or maybe there's some value in making
the ways significantly less contrived? IMO, that's the whole point of
what we're doing here.
-- 
Stas Malyshev
smalyshev@gmail.com